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Comment by superfrank | Hacker News Reader

> The tech field is one that requires constant and ongoing self-development and learning, or you're just going to be left behind and gradually become all but unemployable

Slight tangent, but I hear this all the time and I think it's total BS. Yes, if you're working at a big tech company and are gunning to continually move up the ladder, it's true for a while (eventually soft skills become more important for most), but I know plenty of developers who make a competitive salary, even in HCOL areas, and don't look at code outside of their 9-5 jobs.

Sure, they're not making FAANG salaries, but they're making more than enough to live comfortably on. I can name three different ex-colleagues at three different companies all making well over 100k a year and they're all still writing JQuery.

If you're not striving for the top, there are plenty of development jobs where you can make an above average salary and keep work at work.

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Point taken, but I'd argue that those people who manage to work 9-5 for extended periods of time are, first, probably not suffering from severe depression, and second are actually participating in on-the-job learning that really adds up over the years.

If you have severe depression, you are probably going to be missing out on years (or even decades) of work, and not learning nearly as much either on or off the job... or at most learning a bit on the rebound from your depression (as it's often cyclical, and even severely depressed people tend to have better days when they feel at least somewhat motivated or at least manage to keep it together).

Such severely depressed people are just not going to be competitive with people who manage to keep on working 9-5 for most of their career, even if the latter put in zero extra effort to learn outside of work.

> I can name three different ex-colleagues at three different companies all making well over 100k a year and they're all still writing JQuery.

And when they next apply for a job the recruiters will hang up because they don't have x years of $hotNewTech. Sure they'll probably land a job sooner or later anyway or may be able to rely on word of mouth, but it does give you less opportunities. The jobs they're being rejected for are run of the mill ones too, nothing to do with "striving for the top".

Of course this is stupid and anyone with experience should be able to pick up $hotNewtech easily, but it's how things currently work.

> The jobs they're being rejected for are run of the mill ones too, nothing to do with "striving for the top".

This is absolutely not true and you're just perpetuating the myth.

One of them was the head of another project at the company I worked at pre-covid. He liked the company we were at, but had to move across the country because of some family issues and wasn't sure if the company we were at would let him work remote full time, so he started interviewing so he could have a fall back if they said no. It took him about 6 weeks of interviewing to get 2 different offers. Both interviews were from companies you've probably heard of, but neither were companies I would classify as "tech companies".

If you've got more than a few years experience and are looking in the right places, there are tons of people who don't care that you aren't writing what ever the latest technology is.

Big cities that aren't traditionally "tech cities" have tons of these jobs. Also, like I mentioned above, big companies that aren't tech companies, but have internal tools that need to be maintained have these positions as well (regional banks, large school districts/colleges).

> It took him about 6 weeks of interviewing to get 2 different offers.

And how many rejections did they get for not having $hotNewTech on their resume? That they got a job doesn't demonstrate that they had fewer opportunities, which was the point I was making.

I think our industry is big enough to have some parts where your point applies, and other pockets with completely different dynamics.

Two caveats I would put is: we can do self-development and learning during our job hours, I'd argue it's a right that is usually understood and well supported by our workplaces.

A somewhat darker point: in 20 years there will still be devs writing jQuery, but it will only be a super small fraction of the devs that were in it 10 years ago.

The same way we have devs writing new COBOL code now, and there will still be some 50 years from now, but you can't expect 20% of our field to be leading a successful career in COBOL for the next decades. It will be a selected few that get to keep doing that job for that length of time, the rest will have to move to something else either way.

> I think our industry is big enough to have some parts where your point applies, and other pockets with completely different dynamics.

Yeah, I agree, that was kind of my point.

I see a lot of people who talk about software development as if FAANG is the only game in town, but like you said, our industry is big and only getting bigger. If you know where to look there are tons of laid back tech jobs that don't expect you to eat, sleep, and breath code.

I disagree with you though that there are only a select few who will be able to get these jobs. I think as time goes on, were only going to have more legacy systems that will require knowledge of older languages. Also as tech continues to infiltrate every other aspect of our lives, more and more companies will start to need one or two in house developers to do random tasks where no one cares whether you're using the latest and greatest technology.

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